


You Must Remember This

by Anonymous



Series: The Fundamental Things [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: M/M, cw: aftermath of torture, cw: suicidal impulses, kinkmeme fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 22:34:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21806509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Crowley goes missing.Then the ones who took him bring him back.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: The Fundamental Things [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1629082
Comments: 33
Kudos: 130
Collections: Anonymous





	You Must Remember This

**Author's Note:**

> From [this prompt](https://good-omens-kink.dreamwidth.org/616.html?thread=753000#cmt753000) on the kinkmeme.

Later, the thing Aziraphale would reproach himself most bitterly for was having fallen asleep.  
  
He didn't need to sleep. Neither of them did, and unlike Crowley Aziraphale rarely indulged. But Crowley's arm had been such a pleasant weight wrapped around his shoulders, the soft sounds of their breathing had been so soothing, and Aziraphale's eyes had kept drifting closed for longer and longer periods until finally he'd crossed the shifting border between waking and dreaming.  
  
He'd woken in the evening, his movement prodding Crowley out of sleep as well, and they'd made love again, and then Crowley had snapped himself dressed and left, telling Aziraphale to enjoy the chocolates and he'd be around in a few days.  
  
It was the last time Aziraphale saw him for nearly five years.

* * *

He didn't start looking right away. At first he was a little put out—at the orders he assumed had taken Crowley out of London, and at Crowley for not so much as paying a child to carry a message. Even if they hadn't begun something new that day, they had the Arrangement and it was only polite to keep each other up-to-date on their movements. But Aziraphale supposed it might not have been safe to do it, so his annoyance faded quickly enough. Besides, he had a brand-new bookshop to run, and plenty of humans who went so far as to presume they could buy his books.  
  
When two months had passed and he'd had no word from Crowley, Aziraphale began to feel uneasy. At four months he went to check Crowley's lodgings and found them empty and dusty. There was no sign that Crowley had planned to be away long, nor any message from him, and unease bloomed into worry.  
  
By the time Crowley had been missing for a year, Aziraphale's feelings might fairly have been described as panic. It wasn't as if they'd never been apart before; in the early days there had been several separations of a century or more, and no reason to keep each other appraised of the reasons why. But it had been a long time since either of them had bothered to pretend they were really enemies. There was a reason that Crowley's appearance with gifts, just to celebrate the opening of Aziraphale's shop, had led to the bedroom of the small flat upstairs. Aziraphale couldn't make himself believe that Crowley had seduced him and vanished; it would have been demonic, but it wasn't _Crowley_.  
  
It was at the year mark that he started really looking. By then the trail was cold—insofar as there was any trail at all. No one had seen Crowley leaving London; very few people seemed to remember him having been in London in the first place. No amount of searching, with celestial power or human magic, turned up a trace of him. There were no letters, no messages, nothing. Aziraphale only left the shop on direct orders, in case Crowley came back looking for him, and paid human agents ridiculous amounts of money to comb for rumours of a tall red-headed man in black. But there was no word.  
  
Four years, ten months, and twenty-three days after Crowley had walked out of Aziraphale's shop, Aziraphale returned to it, coming back from a blessing in France that had kept him away for far too long, to discover four Archangels standing in the middle of the main room.  
  
They all wore human forms, but Aziraphale had no eyes for them. Crowley knelt between Michael and Gabriel, in the center of the rug below the oculus. He wore a plain coarse linen tunic and his hands rested on his knees, bound together at the wrist. His head was bowed so that his long hair hid his face. Aziraphale took a step forward before he realised what he was doing and made himself stop.  
  
It was useless to try to excuse himself or deny anything; the fact that the Archangels were there at all meant that he and Crowley had been found out. But he could at least face their fate with some dignity. Aziraphale straightened his shoulders, lifted his chin, and clasped his hands behind his back. With all the calm he could force into his voice, he said, "I suppose it's no use to ask you to spare him."  
  
"The demon Crowley is in no danger from us," said Gabriel. Crowley flinched when his name was spoken and Aziraphale longed to go to him, to make sure he was real. "Aziraphale, we are very disappointed in you, but we understand that you acted out of love." He sounded sad. "No matter how unworthy the object of your love may be, we know it to be real. You will be punished, but neither of you will be destroyed."  
  
"That's...kind of you," said Aziraphale slowly.  
  
Without turning to look at Crowley, Gabriel said, "Demon, from now on you may speak. Aziraphale, he needs to eat, drink, and sleep. We'll be back in a month." All four Archangels vanished.  
  
Aziraphale stood where he was, stunned, until he saw that Crowley was trembling. "Oh, my dear, what's happened?" he exclaimed, and hurried to drop to his knees on the rug before him. He put his hands on Crowley's shoulders. "Crowley, look at me."  
  
Crowley winced again at the sound of his own name, but his head came up. Aziraphale choked on a gasp. His eyes, those lovely golden eyes, were blank and clouded, obviously unseeing. Without conscious thought Aziraphale touched his fingers gently to the ridge of bone over the right eye and let healing flow into Crowley's body.  
  
Nothing changed.  
  
Aziraphale tried again, with the same result.  
  
Before he could make a third attempt, Crowley opened his mouth. In a tiny, tremulous voice, cracked and harsh and _terrified_ , he said, "Aziraphale?"  
  
"Yes," said Aziraphale, fighting to keep his own fear hidden. "Yes, my dear, it's me. It's me and you're safe now." He didn't know if it was true but he had to believe it.  
  
"Angel," Crowley whispered. Tears began to gather at the corners of his poor ruined eyes. "Please, angel."  
  
"Tell me what you need, dear boy."  
  
Crowley's breath shuddered in. "Kill me."

* * *

It took about a week for Aziraphale to decide he must have somehow Fallen without noticing. He couldn't think of any other explanation for how he'd suddenly ended up living in Hell.  
  
Crowley didn't move unless told to do so. He didn't speak unless Aziraphale asked him a direct question. When he perceived something as an order, he obeyed instantly, and Aziraphale soon learnt that he had to watch his phrasing carefully. He didn't realise at first that being asked to choose between alternatives (of anything, down to and including whether he would like sugar in his tea) made Crowley panic, because panic took the form of muteness and a barely-perceptible tremor.  
  
Other things that made Crowley panic included the sound of his own name, an invitation to sit on a chair instead of the floor, pressure on his wrists or ankles, the bathtub, being touched without warning, the smell of smoke, water on his face, raising his voice above a whisper, failing to carry out an 'order', miracles being used on or near him, and the merest hint that Aziraphale was angry about anything at all.  
  
If he slept for more than about an hour he fell into whimpering nightmares he couldn't wake from on his own. He couldn't eat anything with more flavour than plain bread without gagging. Aziraphale discovered quite by accident that he needed to breathe as well as eat and sleep. He could not use miracles, though he could still manifest his wings when told to do so—which, by then predictably, made him panic. Left to his own devices he would kneel wherever Aziraphale had told him to stop moving, head bowed and hands clasped on his knees, for hours on end, and if Aziraphale tried to make him at least use a cushion he would panic.  
  
Nothing Aziraphale could do would erase the damage to his eyes, or remove the elaborate binding sigils branded into his palms. Any time he tried, with Crowley trembling and obedient under his hands, it felt as if the damage simply wasn't there to heal.  
  
All of this Aziraphale could have borne, in the faith that Crowley would eventually come to believe that Aziraphale wouldn't hurt him, didn't _want_ to hurt him. What he could not bear was asking Crowley what he wanted, or needed. Invariably, Crowley would beg for death. On his knees if Aziraphale were lucky, actually prostrated if not, until Aziraphale told him to stop. He never reached out—never _ever_ so much as suggested being the initiator of contact between them—but the whispered litany of _angel please please mercy angel mercy_ wound its way into Aziraphale's head until he heard it even when Crowley wasn't speaking. Never since the invention of alcohol had he wanted more to get drunk.  
  
He was exquisitely careful not to weep where Crowley could hear him.  
  
The month dragged past, longer than the millennia before it, and Aziraphale couldn't fool himself at the end that Crowley was any better than he'd been at the beginning. Any tiny thing would have given him hope, any sign however slight that Crowley could be helped—but there was none. By the time the Archangels returned, Aziraphale was so sunk into despair that he almost couldn't be angry.   
  
At least, so he thought until they were standing before him, shining in their righteousness. Gabriel opened his mouth to speak and Aziraphale said coldly, "I cannot imagine how you have not Fallen." All four of them looked taken aback. At Aziraphale's feet, Crowley began to shake. "How could you possibly think anyone could deserve this? What has _he_ done to deserve _this_?" Aziraphale demanded.  
  
"Demon," said Michael, "tell him what you've done."  
  
"I am the demon Crowley, Serpent of Eden," Crowley said, in his flat whisper. "In my folly I caused the fall of Man, but I was not content. Instead I tempted an angel of the Lord, the Principality Aziraphale, and led him into love which I can never return. Only he can release me from my just punishment for my crimes." By the end of this speech—which Aziraphale had no doubt he would repeat word for word if asked again—Aziraphale was incandescent with wrath. It took him nearly a minute to regain enough control to speak without shouting. The Archangels watched him quietly.  
  
"You've made sure I can't help him," he said at last, and heard his voice shake. "What do you want from me? Tell me what you want, and if you'll help him I will do it. Shall I Fall? Shall I walk into Hell and ask for my own eternal torment, my own destruction? _Tell me_."  
  
"This is an offer that will be made only once," said Gabriel, his face and voice full of a pity that made Aziraphale's palms itch for the hilt of his sword. "We can restore him, just as he was. He will remember nothing of your succumbing to his wiles. He will remember nothing of the years of his punishment."  
  
"Then yes," said Aziraphale.  
  
"We haven't told you the price," said Gabriel.  
  
"I don't care about the price," Aziraphale gritted out. "I don't need time to consider. _Yes._ "  
  
"This is your punishment: We will restore the demon Crowley. He will resume his position on Earth, as you will resume yours. And if ever again, through word or deed, you acknowledge the love that so nearly led to your downfall, our sentence upon him will be reinstated, never to be removed. If you tell him about what has happened, likewise. This will happen whether you are observed or not, whether you are discovered or not. Do you understand, Principality?"  
  
"I understand."  
  
"Step aside," said Gabriel. Aziraphale did, against every instinct he had. The Archangels surrounded Crowley and laid their hands on his shoulders, oblivious to his shudders. Even from where he stood Aziraphale could feel them working. Crowley moaned and Aziraphale's hands clenched into fists.  
  
Then it stopped, and the Archangels stepped back, and Crowley collapsed into a heap where he knelt.  
  
"He'll wake in a few minutes," said Uriel.  
  
"What will he remember about the past five years?" Aziraphale asked, but they were already gone.

* * *

Crowley opened his eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling. He sat up and took in his surroundings: a small, not very clean bedroom. It wasn't his bedroom, or his bed. Last he remembered was going to the angel's new bookshop, bearing gifts, and it was sort of hopeful that he'd woken in what had to be Aziraphale's bed. Less so that the angel wasn't in it with him, looking relaxed or pleased or for preference happily debauched. Crowley swung his feet to the floor, frowning.  
  
His shoes sat near the door and he snapped at them, then again to smooth out the many wrinkles in his clothing. Outside the bedroom a short hallway revealed a narrow staircase; Crowley started down it. "Angel," he called, or started to call, but something rose and strangled the word in his throat. He shook his head and tried again, and this time succeeded.  
  
"Crowley, you're awake," Aziraphale's voice said. Crowley felt a stab of anxiety that faded quickly, and then he was down the stairs, stepping into the bookshop proper. It was very much more organized than he thought he remembered it being, and he stared around in confusion.  
  
Aziraphale stood next to a rolltop desk. He was smiling, but it didn't look entirely sincere and his hands, clasped before him, worried at each other. "Not that I object overmuch, dear boy, you know I don't generally use a bed, but next time do warn me if you plan to sleep so long," said the angel. He sounded off, in a way Crowley couldn't identify.  
  
"How long was I asleep?"  
  
"I didn't see hide nor hair of you for nearly five years," said Aziraphale.  
  
Crowley was so surprised he almost blinked. "Sorry," he said, for lack of anything else to say.  
  
"Oh, don't be!" Aziraphale exclaimed with surprising vigour. He took a step forward and then stopped, and his voice softened to something full of aching sincerity. "It's just so very good to have you back."  
  
"Ah, thanks." For a second they stood there staring at each other. "Got anything to drink?"  
  
Aziraphale's smile got a little more real. "Of course," he said.

* * *

Aziraphale quickly discovered that they were not, in fact, being watched any more closely than they had been before. (It would always be Before, for him. Until the end of the world, and beyond if he survived the Last Battle, he would envy the Aziraphale from Before, who didn't know what Crowley sounded like when he begged to be destroyed.) It baffled him for several years, how the Archangels could believe in his love for Crowley and still think it had arisen in the course of—what, an afternoon? A week? It was almost insulting. Eventually he decided that it was a natural result of their reluctance to visit Earth; every love they had, they'd been created with, and they couldn't imagine it being something that had to _grow_.  
  
Or perhaps they thought that he'd separate himself from Crowley entirely, now that he could not express his love—and sometimes Aziraphale wondered if that might not be the better course. He could not use the word 'torture' (as he would have Before) to describe what it was like to spend time with Crowley After his restoration, but sometimes he didn't know if he could bear it anyway.  
  
Aziraphale had known for a long time that Crowley loved him, and it was just short of physically painful to have to pretend he didn't, to watch Crowley be disappointed, every time Aziraphale deflected or ignored one of his tentative advances. For Crowley it was utterly inexplicable.  
  
And of course, Aziraphale couldn't explain it.  
  
Crowley stopped having difficulty raising his voice only a few months After. He stopped making a face when Aziraphale said his name at perhaps a year. He never did regain his fondness for baths, as far as Aziraphale could tell, and never wore shirts with tight cuffs, but as aftereffects went those were harmless enough. Being in the bookshop didn't appear to worry him, despite having spent that infinite month there.  
  
Life went on. They saw each other once or twice a month. Sometimes they'd be sent out of London, and Aziraphale only panicked a little bit when it was Crowley who was gone. He couched his desire to be told when Crowley was leaving in terms of the Arrangement, of course, because he couldn't tell Crowley _I can't do it again, the waiting, five years of silence and not-knowing, it will kill me for good_.  
  
In the spring of 1838, it was Aziraphale's turn to pick the evening's entertainment so they went to a performance of _Hamlet_.  
  
Crowley complained all the way there, and all the way through the first scene, and then Hamlet began his first soliloquy and Crowley went silent. And stayed that way, his attention fixed on the stage, through _to be or not to be_ , through the fight with Ophelia, through the Players' Mousetrap and the death of Polonius, and it wasn't until the lights came up for the intermission that Crowley shook himself. He was more like normal after that, but when the final curtain had fallen Aziraphale invited him back to the shop for a drink, feeling the need to keep a close eye on him for a bit longer.  
  
They drank some acceptable wine, and talked about nothing, and Crowley was his usual self, sharp and sly; Aziraphale couldn't be sure whether the feeling that he was just a little more subdued than usual was real or the product of his own worries.  
  
It was late enough to be early when Crowley said, "Do you ever think about it?"  
  
Aziraphale had never gotten truly drunk, but he was tipsy enough not to be alarmed at first. He just looked at Crowley, dark glasses set aside, staring into his half-full glass as if it were a pool of ink to scry in, and asked, "Think about what?"  
  
"O, that this too too solid flesh would melt," said Crowley slowly. He turned the stem of his glass between his fingers. "Who would bear the whips and scorns of time, when he himself might his quietus make? Do you ever think about it."  
  
One winter in the late sixteenth century Aziraphale had fallen through the fragile coating of ice on a millpond, into water kept from freezing only by the ice's own insulation. Now he felt again the allover shock of cold, locking his limbs and his lungs and even his heart. Crowley didn't seem to notice. "We're going to be around for Armageddon," the demon went on. "We're immortal, we won't have any choice. Unless we decide to make one."  
  
Without conscious use of a miracle Aziraphale was abruptly stone sober, his voice at least back within his reach. "Don't be absurd," he said, sputtering, aware he was too emphatic and completely unable to help it. Crowley looked up at last, surprise in his face. "Whyever would y—we want to do such a thing?"  
  
"Well for one thing I don't want to have to fight you," said Crowley. "We both know you'd wipe the floor with me."  
  
For a second Aziraphale saw Crowley huddled face-down on the rug, heard him whisper _please please I can't please_ , and it took everything he had not to flinch. "Be that as it may, if you're going to be so morbid I think you've had quite enough to drink." He banished the glasses and empty bottle with a flick of his fingers.  
  
"Angel!" Crowley protested.  
  
"It isn't something to joke about, Crowley," Aziraphale snapped.  
  
"I'm not joking," said Crowley, sounding nettled himself. "You're the one with combat training."  
  
"You were perfectly competent with a sword, the last I saw."  
  
Crowley gave him a look that screamed skepticism. "How much good do you think human fencing is going to do me in the End Times? Besides, I'm perfectly competent, you're actually _good_."  
  
"I don't see that there's any use in discussing it," said Aziraphale. He sounded severe even to himself.  
  
"Right," Crowley drawled. He picked up his glasses and put them on as he got to his feet. "I'll just be off then. _So_ sorry I brought it up." He strode towards the door, summoning his coat, hat and walking stick as he went. "I'll see you in a few weeks, angel."  
  
"Crowley," said Aziraphale wretchedly, but the door was closing behind him and he didn't turn.

* * *

As it turned out, he did see Crowley a few weeks later, and the subject wasn't discussed. It kept not being discussed, and the years slipped past as they always had. They drank together and went to dinner and the theatre, and lent a hand when needed under the terms of the Arrangement, and gradually Aziraphale relaxed. And then, on a clear, beautiful day in St. James Park, Crowley handed him a note.  
  
Of course Crowley could destroy himself if he truly wanted to; there was hardly a shortage of baptismal fonts in London. But having the means close to hand was a different proposition. Time enough to walk to a church was time enough to reconsider, to prevent a fatal mistake on the spur of the moment.  
  
Aziraphale knew even as the words were leaving his mouth that this could be the end of their long friendship, that he was saying things Crowley might not choose to forgive. He felt as if he were watching himself from the outside, as he picked words that would wound, and didn't understand why he was doing it. He was miserably aware that this was exactly the wrong thing to do.  
  
He couldn't help it.  
  
He stormed out of the park and back to the bookshop and climbed fully dressed into his rarely-used bed and wept until he felt hollow.

* * *

In the years that followed Aziraphale wondered if this might not be better. He didn't have to keep disappointing Crowley, and he didn't have to watch his tongue every moment to keep it from spilling destruction into Crowley's ear. By the time the Great War ended, he'd managed to convince himself it was better this way.  
  
But then came the Blitz, and Captain Rose Montgomery who wasn't Rose Montgomery at all, and Crowley, who saved Aziraphale's books when no other being in the cosmos would have thought to, and Aziraphale realised he couldn't do it any longer. When Crowley pulled up in front of the bookshop, Aziraphale invited him in, and it was as if those eighty years had never happened. They drank some acceptable wine and talked about nothing, and for the first time since 1862 Aziraphale was happy.

* * *

When young Shadwell told him what was happening, Aziraphale sat down and thought. It didn't take long.  
  
Crowley was determined, that was obvious; Aziraphale couldn't risk him being hurt or destroyed in pursuit of his goal; all of his helpers were humans, who wouldn't understand the danger and might expose Crowley to the holy water in all innocence. In the end it wasn't much of a choice.  
  
And if the words _You go too fast for me_ tasted of ashes in his mouth as Aziraphale left Crowley's car, that was a price he was willing to pay.

* * *

Crowley hadn’t expected his reaction to Heaven. Of course he’d known it was going to be hard, going back to the place that had rejected him, that hated him, but when the lift doors slid open he had a moment when he wasn’t sure he could _walk_. He was suddenly terrified, and of course the angels holding him noticed.  
  
“Try to face your fate with some dignity, Aziraphale,” said Uriel. Their voice only made it worse. The only thing that let him take the first step was knowing that he had to, for the angel’s sake. He had to do it to save Aziraphale, so he would. He did. He walked down long, deserted corridors (that shouldn’t have been deserted, they wanted to keep his-slash-Aziraphale’s presence here a secret) with Uriel holding one arm and Sandalphon the other. Crowley felt himself tense every time they passed a door, but the one they finally went through led to nothing more threatening than a huge, empty room with windows that looked down on...well, on Earth. The reason they’d done this—at least, the reason Aziraphale had done it. Crowley had done it for Aziraphale and in the privacy of his own head he had no problem admitting that.  
  
On second glance the room wasn’t quite empty; a single chair stood at its center. Uriel and Sandalphon sat him down in it and tied his wrists to the arms. The rope looked like nothing special, but it had absolutely no give and that got him keyed up again. He couldn’t understand it. Sure, this was dangerous, but the angels had shown no sign of being suspicious of the ruse and hellfire couldn’t _hurt_ him so what was the problem?  
  
They waited. After about ten minutes Sandalphon came over to stand in front of him. Crowley looked up, working hard to maintain his calm mask. Aziraphale wouldn’t let them see him sweat.  
  
“If it were up to me,” said Sandalphon, with a grin that pretty much defined ‘shit-eating’, “we’d give you the same treatment we gave your disgusting pet.”  
  
“My what?” Crowley asked, startled out of silence. Fortunately his startled sounded a lot like Aziraphale’s indignant.  
  
One of the things about having a body for so long was that you started to get involuntary physical reactions, just like a human. This wasn’t, technically, Crowley’s body, but he’d inhabited one for long enough that it didn’t matter; in his core muscles started to tremble.  
  
“He means the demon,” Uriel supplied. “We can’t. There’s not enough time and he’s not worth the effort anymore.”  
  
Sandalphon gave him a slow, deliberately insulting up-and-down scan and sneered, “You’re right.” He went back over to stand at Uriel’s side.  
  
Nothing more was said, and by the time Gabriel came in, all false bonhomie, Crowley wasn’t shaking anymore.

* * *

They met in the park; they swapped back; they went to the Ritz. Crowley could not remember the last time he’d been so relaxed, except that he was fairly sure it wasn’t in the past several centuries. They were out from under the thumbs of their employers—for a while, he was quite aware of the limits of fear as a motivator but they’d have a few years at least—and maybe. Maybe now. Maybe now that Heaven wasn’t watching all the time, now that Hell was out of the picture.  
  
Crowley would never have survived so long if he hadn’t been at heart an optimist. He’d have given up by the fourteenth century at the _absolute_ latest. So as they were waiting for dessert, when Aziraphale put his hand on Crowley’s arm to emphasize a point, Crowley tried to catch it with his own.  
  
For a second he thought it might work, this time.  
  
Then Aziraphale snatched his hand away like Crowley’s touch had burned him. A look came over his face that Crowley had seen so damn many times: reluctance to move, overridden by something a lot like panic. It was the reluctance that had always made Crowley keep trying.  
  
“Aziraphale,” said Crowley, as gently as he knew how, “they’re not watching. Now of all possible times, they’re not watching. We’re _safe_. We can do this, if we want to. If _you_ want to, because you’re not stupid, angel, and you know damn well I do.”  
  
“Oh, Crowley, my dear, I’m so sorry. I can’t,” said Aziraphale. Crowley knew he was a sap, knew that he’d believe almost anything the angel told him. Still, he didn’t think he was wrong to believe that it really was _can’t_ rather than _won’t_. He moved his hand back, not very far but far enough to mean something.  
  
“Just tell me why,” he said, and knew his voice was ragged with having done this so many times. “It’s been—angel, it’s been two hundred and fifteen years. Since I thought. Your bookshop opened, and then I woke up in your bed, and all of a sudden you were different. So tell me why. What did I do wrong, what did you _want_ me to do that I didn’t? Tell me why and I’ll never bring it up again.”  
  
“I can’t,” Aziraphale repeated. He sounded desperate and Crowley hated himself for having done this when they’d been so contented. “Please believe that I cannot tell you, and I’m so sorry.”  
  
Crowley nodded. “Right, well then,” he said, and from the look on the angel’s face he heard the echo too. “I’m—I need some time.” He shoved his chair back, stood up. Waved his hand to make sure the bill was paid. “I’ll see you.”  
  
“You are my dearest friend,” said Aziraphale, with all the wide-eyed sincerity that had made Crowley fall for him in the first place. “Tell me you know that.”

"Suppose I do," said Crowley, and walked out.

* * *

He spent a month wallowing. He got drunk; he went to clubs and picked people up; he drove too fast and had to use more than one miracle to avoid a collision with oncoming cars, slow-moving lorries, herds of sheep, and on one memorable occasion a hedgehog who didn’t deserve to die just because Crowley’d had his ego bruised. He bought music and stored it on his phone and listened to it at a volume that would have injured his eardrums if they hadn’t known better than to allow such a thing. He yelled at his plants and watched reruns of American sitcoms and wanked himself silly, and none of it changed the fact that Aziraphale had turned him down, out loud this time.  
  
The angel called him once a week. All three times he picked up. Fortunately Aziraphale seemed to be content with hearing that he was alive, so the conversations, such as they were, didn’t actually rip his heart out.  
  
By the end of the month, Crowley realised he was _angry_. It probably wasn’t fair of him, and he didn’t care. He loved Aziraphale, had done for so long he couldn’t really remember how it had started, and he was tired of dancing around Aziraphale’s evasions and half-truths. He was going to get a straight damn answer for once if it fucking killed him.

* * *

Maybe charging into the bookshop like Caesar at the head of the legions wasn’t the best way to start a sensitive conversation. Crowley rather failed to care. It wasn’t as if making good decisions had ever been a hallmark of his life anyhow.  
  
The shop was closed but the doors opened for him because they always did. He strode across the selling floor (insofar as anything in Aziraphale’s shop deserved that name), skirting the table that sat in the center of the rug under the oculus. None of Aziraphale’s reorganizations had ever moved that table, for some reason.  
  
Aziraphale looked up from his armchair. He had a book in one hand and his ridiculous, unnecessary reading glasses perched on his nose and Crowley loved him so much it hurt. “Oh!” the angel exclaimed. “My dear, you should have told me you were—”  
  
Crowley tore his glasses off his face and demanded, “Tell me you don’t love me.” Aziraphale sputtered to a halt and gaped at him. “Tell me you don’t want me. I’ll get over it. Eventually. So _tell me_ , angel. You can’t say you do, so tell me you don’t.”  
  
Aziraphale swallowed. “I don’t love you,” he said, his voice shaking. “I don’t want you.”  
  
“You’re lying,” said Crowley, grimly triumphant. He advanced on Aziraphale slowly enough not to alarm him, fast enough to get to him before the shock wore off, braced one knee on the edge of the seat cushion, took the angel’s face in both hands, and kissed him.  
  
For half a second it was everything Crowley had ever dreamed. Aziraphale even started to respond, his lips parting. Then two things happened more or less simultaneously. Aziraphale gasped, “ _No_ ,” and his hands came up to shove at Crowley’s chest.  
  
And something in Crowley’s mind snapped.

* * *

“No, oh no, oh please,” Aziraphale moaned as Crowley crumpled at his feet. He threw himself off the chair and dropped to his knees.  
  
Crowley was bent at the waist, his forehead all but touching the floor and both hands clutching at his head. He was making a thin, horrible sound. “Please,” Aziraphale heard himself chanting, “no, please, no, please—” but Crowley didn’t answer him; nothing answered him. He reached out and took Crowley by the biceps, and at the contact he gasped again, in surprise this time.  
  
He could _feel_ it, the power clawing into Crowley’s being, in a way he hadn’t during their month in Hell, because it wasn’t quite complete. There were a few loose ends, for lack of a better term, that had yet to weave their way into the greater pattern. Aziraphale abandoned his grasp on his mortal senses and lunged for one.  
  
If a human had been watching, it would have looked like nothing much: a red-haired man in black, huddled on the floor having some sort of seizure, while a blond man in an old-fashioned cream coat knelt over him, his eyes closed in concentration.  
  
For those with eyes to see, it was a different thing altogether.  
  
The dark fire that was Crowley twisted in the grip of a contracting lattice of gold. He fought, but the Archangels’ power was too much for him; he was on the inside of the trap and couldn’t get any purchase on it. _Aziraphale!_ he cried, though no human would have heard it. Aziraphale seized one of the remaining strands of the curse and _yanked_. The magic was all of a piece; disrupting any part of it would keep it from taking effect.  
  
He hoped.  
  
The delicate, cruel structure of the curse unwound. Crowley screamed, both physically and in the realm of their true forms. Aziraphale’s human eyes registered a flash of light bright enough to blind a normal person.  
  
Then it was over, and he dropped back into his corporeal body as if he’d jumped into a pond.  
  
For several seconds there was no sound except their breathing, harsh and heavy. Then Crowley’s voice, tiny and shaking, said, “Aziraphale?”  
  
_Please, Lord,_ Aziraphale thought, and felt tears starting in his eyes. He forced his voice calm. “Yes. Yes, my dear, it’s me.” Memory clamoured at the gates of his mind and he could not force himself to say _you’re safe now_. This time he knew it wasn’t true.  
  
“Angel,” Crowley whispered. “Please, angel.”  
  
His hands unwound from his hair and reached out. Aziraphale took them on reflex, and froze. Crowley had reached for him. Crowley’s palms were unmarked. The demon heaved himself upright, and lifted his head; his eyes were clear.  
  
As if from a great distance, Aziraphale heard his own voice say, “Tell me what you need, dear boy.”  
  
“Tell me the truth,” said Crowley.  
  
Aziraphale took a deep breath. “I love you,” he said, and a smile broke over Crowley’s face like the sun rising.


End file.
